Nonprofit tells League City council to stop praying before meetings

By Craig Hlavaty |
July 23, 2013
| Updated: July 23, 2013 5:18pm

The Madison, Wis.,-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter to the League City City Council asking them to refrain from prayer before their meetings.

Staff attorney Elizabeth Cavell says that the FFRF received a complaint from a local in League City.

Cavell says that once her group receives a complaint concerning what a local sees as a constitutional violation, they independently verify that it is taking place.

"In this case, the invocations are on council meeting agendas, minutes and viewable online," says Cavell.

The nationwide nonprofit foundation has over 900 members in Texas alone. They currently have 19,000 members across the country.

You may remember hearing the FFRF name late last year after they complained about banners bearing religious messages used by the Kountze High cheerleading squad for football games. That case is still tied up in the court system.

The League City letter is addressed to Mayor Tim Paulissen and asks that League City's council members not open their meetings with prayer, claiming it is a waste of taxpayer dollars and alienates those that identify with the 19 percent of the country that consider themselves not religious.

"Prayer at government meetings is unnecessary, inappropriate, and divisive. Council members are free to pray privately or to worship on their own time in their own way. They do not need to worship on taxpayers' time," says the letter sent on July 15.

"The best solution is for Council to drop these prayers altogether."

Mayor Paulissen says that they have no plans to change their meeting format.

"The city has been doing this since 1962, and nobody has ever complained, to my knowledge," said the mayor this afternoon. "It's not just my stance. I have the full support of those on the city council, too."

The council has a rotating list of pastors and laymen that pray each meeting. Paulissen doesn't see this as a waste of taxpayers' money, as the FFRF alleges.

"It's not a waste of taxpayers' money. Everybody supports the prayer. It's non-denominational in content," he says.

"This is what our forefathers did, too," he adds, mentioning that the first Continental Congress even prayed before their official business.

The mayor says that he has been inundated with supportive emails since the letter was made public, and has done a few radio interviews.

"I'm not trying to dodge anyone," he says.

Paulissen has lived in League City since 1994, and has been on the council since 2007. He was elected mayor in 2011.

Cavell says that in the past letters like this have in fact changed some minds, though it's doubtful League City will budge.

"There have been local governments that have discontinued prayer practices or adopted a moment of silence instead after receiving a complaint from FFRF," she said.